Wheat lock limit up

Wheat prices, as I mentioned a few days ago, appear to be breaking out into a possible new bull trend. All the grains and oilseeds are surging to new price highs every few days. Oh, uh, but there's no inflation according to the Fed.

Personal Note - Wildlife and the hard winter this year:

Anecdotally, I buy wild bird food for the birds, especially the wild quail, that live in my neighborhood. We live in the Rocky Mountains, and we have large blue spruce trees in the yard where about 2-3 dozen California quail roost at night. I love to watch them scratch for seeds like chickens in the pine needles underneath the spruce trees. I also enjoy seeing the families of 1-inch tall quail chicks in the spring and summer. I also enjoy the black-capped chickadees and some of the other beautiful songbirds that I don't know the names of.

Unfortunately, 80-90% are killed by the neighborhood house cats or cars-- both the adults and chicks. The hawks also take quite a few. I've seen entire families of quail run over by cars that never even slowed down, and I've chased away (or trapped and sent to shelters) many cats that were hiding under our bushes waiting for the families of quail. The chicks can't fly for the first 3-4 weeks of life, so they are sitting ducks for the cats. And its quite difficult to outrun a car when you have legs that are only 1/2 inch long. The adults are reluctant to fly away from their chicks, even when their own lives are in danger. Between the hawks in the air and the cars and cats on the ground, they have very tough lives, most adults living only 1-3 years.

This winter, we have had snow on the ground continuously since Thanksgiving (unusual even for the Rockies), and the wild birds have had no natural food sources since then. Without winter feeding, many of them would die. It saddens me each time I find another one dead in the yard. Often, it is a violent death (cars, cats). In the winter, they simply starve to death and I find their little bodies around the yard; sometimes, they fall dead from the trees during the very cold winter nights. The quail eat primarily insects, but also small plants and seeds. With a very harsh and snowy winter this year, all of those food sources are either underground (insects) or covered with snow (plants, seeds).

Even the deer are starving to death. The State of Utah this week has begun emergency feeding of some of the deer to prevent a wildlife disaster. They have been showing video of the deer on the news in which the snow is so deep, the deer are buried in it up to their heads. All they can do is stand in the deep snow and starve to death. Very sad situation! We live in a city in the suburbs of Salt Lake City, but I've noticed that over the past week, the deer have begun a virtual invasion of our yard at night looking for food. They are even eating the rose bushes! Ouch!

Grain Prices Skyrocketing!

Last winter, I was able to buy 40 lb. bags of wild bird seed for a price of $7-8 each at Petco. This winter, those same bags of wild bird food at Petco cost $17.99 as of yesterday. Grains prices are skyrocketing, and all the grains that I trade are very close to all-time high prices today. I have been able to buy smaller bags at Ace Hardware, but the total price is still about 50% higher than last year. Soybean prices have tripled in the last 16 months. Wow!

The point of this whole story is simply to explain in real terms that the price of grains continues to go higher. These prices affect people, too. All products made from grains, and livestock raised for meat must be fed grain as well. The cost of dairy products are impacted more than meat because dairy cattle must be fed grain throughout their productive cycles, while meat cattle are only fed grain in the last few weeks of their lives.